Day 2, progress and a little more bad news

The doors opened promptly at 8am, and we were ready.  Dan said Good Morning, and moved us into the shop.  They jumped right on us and Rick started grinding away on the new wheel well fiberglass, got that done and climbed up to work on our front cap.  We are losing some of our clear coat which is one of the reasons that we wanted to get this paint work done.  Also we have experienced small cracks right where the front cap meets the roof.  This is a common occurrence unfortunately, it is caused by the manufacturer doing a crappy job rushing the build of these coaches.  I personally think they get a little lazy up near the top where it gets a little harder to reach and deal with.

This is the spot with the crack on both sides

The bad news was when Rick started getting in there grinding away the coating to get down to the fiberglass so he could repair it, he found out Monaco had applied more than an inch of filler in this joint, so our quick and easy repair went down the drain.  You see the filler has to be ground away all the way down to the fiberglass so the repair will stick.

The offending area

You can see in this photo how thick the filler is on the top

Well now the repair would necessitate removal of our rails so Rick would be able to get in there to remove the filler and do the necessary glass repair.  In the top photo you can see the rail behind the repair point. On the drivers side it encloses a large patio awning that weighs 450#, a bit of a challenge, but the one you can see in these photos on the passenger side is a look-alike rail with no awning, fairly light.  So this little surprise added another day, and of course more cost, but it needs to be done right.  

Jan and I decided to take off and took a nice 3 mile walk around a pretty lake, then had a sensational Vietnamese lunch at Saigon Bistro.  We tried to stay away for awhile so took a nice ride killing time.  When we got back both rails had been removed, the bad driver's side had been prepped and fiberglassed, and the passenger side had been constructed correctly so it was a easy job to prep and glass it.

The driver's side as it should be

The "bad" side all glassed in

So all in all, just a bit more money and time to get a permanent repair that will last the life of the motorhome.  So about 4:30 Dan backed us out 10 feet to our overnight campsite which tonight is definitely in the high rent district, we have a Newell on one side and a Prevost on the other, hopefully they will accept us:-)

Our Newell neighbor